


heaven is

by parrishes



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Afterlife, Destiel - Freeform, Domestic Castiel/Dean Winchester, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, I will stomp the finale underneath my boot 1984-style, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Finale, The Author Regrets Nothing, picture this cute-ass future forever motherfuckers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:09:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27671147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parrishes/pseuds/parrishes
Summary: Whether heaven is a place on earth or a place where nothing ever happens, Dean and Cas are happy where they are.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 3
Kudos: 35





	heaven is

_A cabin_ , Dean says, and Cas is so beyond happy, so ecstatic—burstingly and achingly so—that he doesn’t care where they live, or un-live or post-live, because after all this time they are finally together, forever, and that’s all that matters now. 

_Yeah, a cabin,_ Dean says, tracing Orion’s Belt in the sky with one hand, head resting on his folded arm as they lie on Baby’s hood, _a cabin on the lake. A little dock, so we can fish. The sun comes up, it goes back down… Finally, some consistency._ He looks at Cas. _That all right with you?_

_Of course,_ Cas answers. _Why wouldn’t it be?_

_No reason. Just don’t want this to be all me, you know_ , he says, and Cas smiles into the night sky. 

_Orion and Libra aren’t anywhere near each other in the sky_ , he tells Dean, giving him a pointed look as he points at the stars, _but here they are. Is that what you mean by consistency?_

_No._ Sam is here, Eileen is here, all their loved ones are here, and still Dean struggles with opening up. It’s sometimes hard when he withdraws, but despite it all, Dean is still such a lovely man to build a home in. _You’re what I mean_. 

Consistent, and loving, and eternal. Time is different in their world, but visions of the days ahead stretch out before them—a long road in the night, music on the radio, fingers interlocked together on the gearshift. The cabin Dean wants, their family together for movie night, firewood snapping, laughter and beer and board games. The dock, the lake, the happy early-morning hum as the world wakes up, the steam that rises from the water in the sunlight—time enough, for all the works and days of hands—

Time enough for the dreaming blue stillness before dawn, the tangle of their legs between the linen sheets, how light it all feels, the peace of it—

Heaven. Both _a place on earth (with you)_ , and _a place where nothing ever happens_. If nothing ever happens to them ever again, it still won’t be soon enough. 

* * *

Cas likes to sprawl out on the bed. Dean knows that Cas does this, and has known that he does this for some time, but it can make their going to sleep into a nightly sporting event. Their bed is a California king with white sheets and a warm comforter and a throw blanket for their pets, and _still_ Cas manages to spread himself out over a good eighty-five percent of it like an opened parachute of celestial intent. 

“ _Move,_ Cas,” Dean says, but Cas just keeps on snoring. “Cas. I mean it, come on. Make some room here.” 

Sighing, Dean pulls the covers back as much as he can before he slips one hand beneath Cas’s shoulder, the other under his hip, inhales, and flips Cas onto his side. 

“You could have asked me to move,” Cas mumbles, and Dean snorts. 

“Has that ever worked?” he asks as he slides into the bed. 

“First times f’r ever’thing,” Cas slurs, already four-fifths asleep, and Dean wraps an arm around him and pulls him close. Miracle and Velma come running through the half-opened door—Miracle takes his place on the blanket at the foot of the bed, and Velma wiggles her calico body (Dean no longer has any allergies to cats) to fit into the awkward space between the back of Cas’s knees and Dean’s own bony kneecaps. _Good. The gang’s all here._

The lamp turns off at his thought. In the dark he listens to Cas’s breathing, his heart, Miracle’s whuffs and Velma’s purring fading as she falls asleep, and the sound of the wind in the pine trees outside. 

* * *

They shift in the night. When Cas wakes, he is the one with an arm wrapped around Dean, whose resistance to sunlight touching his eyelids is unmatched and unparalleled by any entity Cas has ever encountered. In fairness to Dean, it’s still only barely dawn, and true to form Miracle perks up his ears when he sees that Cas is awake. 

Miracle doesn’t need to eat—none of them do, but eat they do anyway—but the routine of feeding the pets in the morning is one they enjoy sticking to. 

Cas takes his time stretching all his limbs out, and Dean keeps on slumbering peacefully. He picks up Miracle and lets him down softly on the ground—Velma ruffles her ears in irritation, but grudgingly wakes herself up enough to jump down with a little meow of annoyance and her tail stick-straight in the air. 

Whenever it is they decide that the morning starts, the routine so far has gone like this: one of them wakes, heads down from the loft to their sundrenched kitchen, feeds Miracle and Velma, puts the coffee on, and waits for the other—and now, now that there is nothing more and nothing less for them than each other, they can wait and love indefinitely. 

Dean usually doesn’t sleep in _too_ long, although there are exceptions, which usually involve a distinct lack of clothing and the life-or-death choice of whether or not they feel like doing the laundry, or just waving it out of existence. Cas, Dean has learned, actually prefers doing laundry to cooking, but nonetheless, his angel still makes a mean pot of coffee. 

Sure enough, Dean comes staggering down the stairs in a tattered Led Zeppelin shirt and red and black plaid flannel pajama pants, just after Cas has set the coffee to brew. 

“Mornin’,” he yawns, and stretches his arms above his head with a sigh of contentment. Cas has always felt himself secretly privileged to witness Dean like this, these little moments—the happy sighs, the shape of his eyes when he feels vulnerable, the feel of the scars on his skin—and the best part is that it never has to end. And that it won’t. 

* * *

Their home isn’t large, or fancy, aside from the high-definition television and their steroidal coffee maker and the kitchen in general and the sound system, but it is _theirs_ , together, near enough to their loved ones but far enough that they can go long stretches where no visitors come. Sam and Eileen, John and Mary, Bobby and Rufus and the Harvelles, they’ve all stopped by more than once, but more often than not Dean and Cas’s little corner of the world beyond is solely inhabited by them. 

Cas loves their cabin, but Dean _loves_ it—it’s the life he’s always wanted, the home he’s always craved. The company is a little different than expected, but Dean is beyond happy with the way it’s all turned out. 

Their home is surrounded by woods, a mixture of trees that would never grow together in the same climate—deciduous, coniferous, fruit trees that only grow in a certain region on the Earth. There’s the lake with its worn and ramshackle dock where Dean fishes and Cas watches the mountains across the water, or throws a ball off the dock for Miracle to leap and chase. There’s the leaf-covered path down to the lake where Miracle likes to run, the deck with the lights strung across that Velma tries desperately to reach, the wide windows that overlook the cliff, the hilly route in—all of it is beautiful, and because it can be any and every season, at any time, the changeability makes it doubly so. 

Cas brings his own touches to their home. Artifacts from Earth, from the places he’s been stationed over the millenia, books he’s read and loved, photographs—it’s a restful dwelling, natural, made of wood and stone, eclectic and cozy. Baby has a detached garage to herself, and sometimes Cas will find Dean there, tinkering with Baby even though she doesn’t need it. (Sometimes he’ll go for the express purpose of watching Dean get sweaty and greasy during his work, and every time he does Dean bemoans afterwards that Baby’s back seat once again needs cleaning.) There’s a shed with tools for the landscaping and for Dean's newfound woodworking hobby—there’s everything they could ever want. 

In the daytime, they drink coffee, visit family and friends, spend time outside, read, do anything and everything that they want. Sometimes they work, just for the novelty of it. Sometimes they lay in bed all day kissing and fucking and laughing whenever there’s a noise that sounds like a fart. Sometimes the day is dominated by the smell of bacon and snickerdoodles. Sometimes by the silence. Sometimes the smiles. 

In the nighttime, Cas will start a fire in the fireplace and Dean will make them hot cocoa with whiskey in it. They’ll turn on a movie or a show and Dean will wiggle his cold, Scooby-Doo-besocked feet underneath Cas’s thigh and wink, and Cas will chuckle and sling his arm over the side of the sofa. Sometimes they’ll have the family over and drink and stay awake until dawn, when they all stumble inside and their visitors crash wherever they can find a spot. Sometimes they’ll turn off all the lights and pass the time by slowly undressing each other in the moonlight, measuring out kisses with each article of clothing, until there’s nothing left to remove. Sometimes Dean turns on AC/DC and Asia and dances while he perfects his bacon cheeseburgers, and sometimes Cas will read Eliot and Hesiod and the Epic of Gilgamesh to Dean as they fold laundry.

Dean’s favorite, though, is when Cas tells him stories, and Cas is full of them—bursting with them, really. It’s not the stories that Dean loves, it’s watching Cas as he tells them—the way his eyes narrow, how blue they are, the way he gets lost in his recollections, the dry, snarky commentary that never fails to make Dean laugh long and hard from the belly—and it’s his favorite thing in the whole world. 

“That sounds like an experience,” Dean tells Cas one night as he finishes a tale, half-tipsy and drowsy from his three mugs of cocoa, covers pulled up to his shoulders. 

“Watching those little fish wiggle their way onto the land made me feel... _something_. I didn’t know what it was at the time.” 

“And now?” 

Cas gives him a look. “Oh, I know now,” he says, suddenly serious, and kisses Dean soundly.

* * *

 _Ever since you pulled me out of hell… it was you, Cas. It was always you_. Dean still isn’t looking at him as he talks, but Cas knows that he’s speaking from a place beyond the heart, from beyond the beyond. 

_I fought for you so you could fight for others_ , Cas says, tracing the faint omega-shape of Libra in the sky and the silhouetted lines of the treetops. _Over and over again I watched you choose the world. But you’re part of the world too, Dean. Isn’t it time that someone chose you?_

Dean can’t answer that. Instead he reaches out to take Cas’s hand in his, pulling the trenchcoat-turned-blanket closer to him, inhaling the smell. … _Our house better have a nice kitchen,_ he says after a moment, out of the blue. _I’m not gonna be cooking for us on a pansy-ass electric stove. Gas range. I mean it._

_That’s fine. As long as I get scenery and windows_ , Cas replies, and Dean acquiesces, as usual, with grace. _The selling point for me is that it’s us._

_You’re a real estate agent’s wet dream, Cas. Anything works._ Dean suddenly sits up. _Oh. We should write that one down for later._

Scenery and windows really is the only thing Cas wants. But the fact that he and Dean are _here_ , making these choices, discussing the eternity they have to spend together… it’s sobering and yet far beyond thrilling, all at once. 

_What’s with the face?_ Dean asks, squeezing Cas’s hand. 

_Nothing. Strange to be so happy, that’s all_ , Cas says. _Strange to have the rest of existence to do this. To be together._

To his surprise, Dean laughs. _It’s overdue, man. All of this—us—it’s so overdue, but it’s all over now, it’s all over now baby blue,_ and Dean’s right, it is. It is over, for baby blue and a tan trenchcoat and a black car, and all the other colors that thread throughout their story. 

Orion turns and leaves the skyline, and Ursa Major lumbers in to take his place. She sniffs the scales before laying down, and Dean is proud of himself for finding the Big Dipper without Cas’s help. Behind them, the trees sprout and the cliff starts to rise in the darkness, and from their dreams and wishes the house begins to form.

The sun can rise whenever they wish, but they have no reason to rush the night away. Cas’s hand is warm in Dean’s own and when Dean’s fingers intertwine with his, all that they register is stillness and silence and and the long stretch of the life ahead, open and free. 

**Author's Note:**

> I reject the SPN finale and substitute my own. Also I never thought I'd be writing Destiel fic in the year of our lord 2020, but here we are. As usual, please let me know what you think!


End file.
